The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (48 page)

The idea of the argument was presented to Robert Wagner’s representative, lawyer Paul Ziffren, who gave a statement saying that he could not possibly elaborate on any disagreement between Wagner and Walken as he had not yet talked to him. “He’s still in a total state of shock,” said Ziffren. He then added that it was an important matter that Noguchi had concluded death by accidental drowning, “and frankly, I don’t see the relevance of some of the other things”.

Many others didn’t see the relevance either, except for Noguchi’s supposed love for juicy details, but still he did manage to bring things back down to earth when he told reporters that there was “no evidence of foul play” on Natalie’s body, and bruises – including one that had been found on her left cheek – were caused by her falling against the yacht as she fell. “It was not a homicide,” he said, before adding, “It was not a suicide, it was an accident.” However, he did add that the woman could quite possibly have yelled for assistance while in the water, “but no one heard”.

The fact that the coroner brought up the idea that Natalie could have tried to get help ties in with what a woman by the name of Marilyn Wayne told police on the morning after the body had been found. She and a friend had been on a boat in the same cove as the Wagners when the tragedy happened, and Wayne had been asleep before being woken up by her friend. According to her, her friend frantically shook her awake to ask if she could hear a woman crying for help. Wayne listened quietly and sure enough, there was a voice shouting, “Help me, somebody help me”, from the water.

The friends looked into the dark sea but could not determine where the voice was coming from. Added to that, there was a party on another boat near to them and several times they heard people shout, “We’re coming to get you.” Presuming that the shouts for help were related to fun at the party, they did not feel they should interfere. “Boats are funny,” Wayne told reporters. “People don’t want you interfering on their boats. You never know what the reaction will be.” Other boat owners in the vicinity later claimed not to have heard anything at all though the two friends remained adamant that the woman’s voice was clear and coming from somewhere in the water. Shortly after midnight, however, the sound stopped altogether, and silence fell on the water once more.

While people were arguing over whether or not there was any kind of mysterious circumstance that led to the death of Natalie Wood the actress, Natalie the wife and mother was buried beneath a tree in Westwood Memorial Park – the same cemetery where Marilyn Monroe and a host of other stars were laid to rest over the years. Friends including Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Gene Kelly attended the proceedings, while Roddy McDowall paid tribute to the star, saying that she was “capable of truly giving with adult delight and childlike naughtiness”. Robert Wagner, his daughter Courtney and Natalie’s daughter Natasha then took a flower each as a memento, before the grieving man finally leant over the coffin and said a brief goodbye, kissing the closed casket just one last time.

Friends and co-stars then gave their tributes to the world’s press with Michael Caine describing Natalie as a “great family woman, which I’ve noticed is quite rare in America. She was devoted to her husband and her children.” James Stewart, who acted with Natalie when she was just a child, declared, “we were just sure she would develop into a very fine actress – and she did”, while Fred MacMurray, who had also worked alongside the child actress, described her as a “lovely little girl”.

The tributes were warm and heartfelt but, once given, the friends of Natalie Wood then went back to work and on with their lives. The Wagner family, however, were left to try and pick up the pieces, but this need for quiet reflection did not stop the many rumours and stories springing up over the years, with many discussions and even whole documentaries being dedicated to what could – or could not – have happened during that dark night in 1981.

In November 2011 the case of Natalie Wood’s death was reopened after lobbying from the actress’s sister Lana, Natalie’s biographer, Marti Rulli, and the captain of the boat, Dennis Davern. It had taken the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department a year to reopen the case, but after claiming that new information had been presented, a new investigation was sought and the press went frantic.

According to reports at the time, some of the new information came when an audio emerged of Lana Wood discussing her sister’s death. In the tape the woman apparently discloses that the boat’s captain Dennis Davern told her that when Natalie fell overboard, Robert Wagner had insisted she be left in the water to “teach her a lesson”. Unfortunately – if the story is to be believed – the lesson went too far and the woman ultimately drowned.

Another piece of new evidence was that the captain had apparently admitted to lying during a previous enquiry, and later claimed that a fight between Wood and Wagner had taken place prior to the actress’s death. These two pieces of information were enough to reopen the case and the press went wild about the possibility of more mud-raking and mystery. Of course, the first person they contacted was Robert Wagner, though it has to be said that it was made very clear from the start that he was not a suspect in the death of his wife. Through a spokesperson the actor and his family declared that they were in full support of the department’s work, though added that they sincerely hoped the new information was from a credible source, rather than someone simply trying to profit from Wood’s death, thirty years afterwards.

Although Christopher Walken was not considered to be a suspect in the inquiry either, newspaper reporters still banged on his door for a comment. None came, however, and instead he hired a lawyer to represent his interests in the case. A year later the actor appeared on CBS
This Morning
and declined once again to talk, stating that there was so much information on the internet that anything the interviewer wanted to know could be easily looked up.

Not much is known about the reinvestigation, as much of the information was kept under wraps. However, one interesting thing surfaced, and that was the whereabouts of the boat,
The Splendour
, which had been the biggest dumb witness in the Natalie Wood case. Its owner, Ron Nelson, had bought the boat in 1986, and had known about the investigation for a few weeks before it became public knowledge. However, whether or not the police found anything of any interest in the boat itself is unlikely, as after thirty years and some time being used as a charter boat, any remaining evidence was going to be long gone.

Eventually, after nine months of investigation, Natalie Wood’s death certificate was amended from accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors” and stated that the circumstances surrounding the death were “not clearly established”. Then in early 2013 more information was released when it was claimed that the bruises found on Natalie Wood’s body had been sustained before she went overboard, and not after. The marks, it was stated in the report, could have been “non-accidental”, according to the medical examiner, and investigations are said to continue quietly though it is not known how long they will remain active. In the meantime, the coroner’s office is not willing to openly discuss the case, preferring to leave the majority of its enquiry private for as long as possible.

After two investigations and thirty years of speculation and rumour, Natalie Wood’s death still remains a mystery and unless something substantial is brought to the table, it seems that it will forever remain that way.

The Chateau Marmont Hotel in the heart of Hollywood is as luxurious a hotel as you could possibly hope to stay in. Its guest book reads like a who’s who of the entertainment business, and former guests include the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Elizabeth Taylor. The hotel prides itself on being the place to be whoever you want to be, and it is said that Columbia Pictures executive Harry Cohn once said that if you had to get in trouble, you might as well do it at the Chateau Marmont. But while the hotel is everything you could possibly want in terms of glamour and sophistication, it also received unwanted attention in 1982, when
The Blues Brothers
star John Belushi passed away in bungalow number three.

Born in Chicago on 24 January 1949, John was one of four children born to Agnes and Adam Belushi. Always a joker, he had an interest in comedy from an early age, and his high jinks in school caused chaos in more than one classroom. In short, he was the class clown who loved to laugh, but it was love of another kind that he found as a teenager, when he attended Wheaton Central High School and fell for his future wife, Judy Jacklin. The two teenagers dated and Belushi developed an interest in sports and theatre, appearing in several stage productions in Chicago and then dabbling quite successfully in improvised comedy.

It was his interest in making people laugh that led to John’s first real break, when he appeared with a Chicago comedy troupe and performed with them eight times a week. Belushi later said that the audience expected the comedians to fail a third of the time and “you learned to write on your feet”. Rather than expecting him to fail, in actual fact the audience loved the comedian and he succeeded in unwittingly upstaging the other performers just by being on the stage.

As he grew into his twenties, the young man was drawn more and more into the comedy profession, and by 1972 he was appearing off-Broadway in
National Lampoon’s Lemmings
. Having got a taste for the bright lights of New York, it wasn’t long before both Belushi and Jacklin were living full-time in the Big Apple where the couple gained work on
The National Lampoon Radio Hour
– him as a player and her as producer. The programme was a hit and gave them enough security finally to settle down and marry, which they did on New Year’s Eve, 1976.

John’s popularity began to increase and he became one of the original cast members of
Saturday Night Live
. The show is now famous for spawning the careers of such greats as Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, and it was a fabulous outlet for Belushi’s comic magic. In the show he entertained viewers with his version of a Greek restaurant owner who served every customer with cheeseburger, chips and Pepsi no matter what they originally ordered. Then there was his version of a samurai warrior who howled in mock Japanese all the while slashing his sword. He was a huge success, something he put down to his ability to make fun of himself: “Most movies today make people feel inadequate. I don’t do that,” he said in an interview shortly before he passed away.

Thanks to
Saturday Night Live
, John developed a deep friendship with Dan Aykroyd, who later explained how they developed their most successful act, “The Blues Brothers”. Apparently on the very first day the two met, they went out for a late-night drink and got speaking about music. John was into punk and heavy metal, while Dan was very much interested in the blues. Insisting that John should at least listen to some blues music he put some on and from there the idea of “The Blue Brothers” was born. After that night, the Blues Brothers sketch became a regular part of
Saturday Night Live
, and was an instant hit with viewers and producers alike.

The sketch grew into something of a phenomenon, and Belushi and Aykroyd released an album of their hits, before making
The Blues Brothers
movie, which was released in 1980. The film was not such a huge hit at the box office, though over the past thirty-plus years it has gone on to be considered a cult movie and has inspired countless tribute acts, impersonations and even a popular London theatre show. Not only that, but the Blues Brothers as a band has gone on, long after the passing of Belushi, with a string of guest singers, a world tour, festival appearances and another movie called
Blues Brothers 2000
. There is even talk of a TV series being made, such is the continued success and inspiration of the Blues Brothers.

On stage it seemed that Belushi was a carefree soul who never had a problem in his life, but as is the case with many comedians, behind his fun-loving persona lay a somewhat troubled man. He was admired by many for the fact that he was a little overweight and average-looking, and yet still a huge star, though while these things inspired others, sadly they were the very things that Belushi worried himself about to the point of despair. He hated the pressure of his career and the way people were constantly telling him to watch what he said and did in public. He was a relatively free spirit and the idea of being restricted was certainly taking its toll.

In order to take the edge off his anxieties, Belushi unfortunately began using large amounts of cocaine; a habit which was not made any easier given the industry he was in. Drug-dealers and hangers-on found it easy to offer Belushi everything he wanted in terms of narcotics, and it got to be such a problem that the actor himself even employed people to stop the dealers approaching him in elevators and other public places.

His drug-taking was so extreme it seems, that when making the movie
Animal House
, director John Landis observed that he abused his body “in ways that would kill bulls”, and worried constantly that the actor was going to burn himself out. Friends also became concerned, especially when Belushi claimed that he disliked himself so much that he didn’t like anybody who liked him.

John spent the summer of 1981 at Martha’s Vineyard where he owned a property. Encouraged by his wife Judy and his friend Dan Aykroyd, the comedian cleaned up his act somewhat, relaxed in the hot tub and took life easy for once. Both Aykroyd and Judy also kept away the unscrupulous people who had been hanging around the star, and together they all had – as Aykroyd later described to
Guardian
writer Sean O’Hagan – “a beautiful summer”.

But it wasn’t long before John’s demons returned, when he moved back out to Hollywood in order to work with writer Don Novello on a screenplay entitled “Noble Rot”. The pair had a lot of work to do and Belushi would often stay awake all night in order to keep up with his deadlines. So obsessed was Belushi with getting the job done that the actor even ate in his room at the Chateau Marmont hotel, preferring to work as many hours as possible rather than go to a restaurant. However, even after undertaking a huge amount of work in relation to the prospective movie, it would seem that the studio bosses were still not quite happy with the script, and Belushi was furious. Added to that, he had been offered a role in a movie called
Joy of Sex
, which would have involved a huge fee, but the character was not entirely likeable, therefore leaving him feeling conflicted. In short, Belushi found the entire experience of negotiating his future exhausting, and he seems to have taken solace in using and abusing drugs in a big way during this time.